1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a vehicle video recording device, and more particularly, to a vehicle video recording device and a driving information providing method.
2. Background Art
As vehicles increasingly become necessities, side effects such as illegal parking problems, traffic jams, and traffic accidents also increase.
Particularly, the traffic accidents might be smoothly settled by the agreement between the interested persons, but when the degrees of negligence are vague, the agreement between the interested persons is not easily reached. In case of a hit-and-run accident, very severe aftereffects may be caused from the moral point of view.
Therefore, the traffic accidents need to be treated on the basis of objective materials. Various methods for mounting a device like a black box of an airplane on a vehicle and utilizing the record of the device as objective materials at the time of treating a traffic accident have been developed in consideration of the above-mentioned necessity.
Vehicle black box systems (vehicle video recording devices) which are being developed mainly employ a method of recording and storing video data obtained by capturing an image of the periphery of the vehicle with a camera. Such vehicle video recording devices can be classified into a type not including a liquid crystal display because it can be connected to an external electronic apparatus so as to confirm recorded video data and a type including a liquid crystal display so as to confirm the recorded video data by itself.
The configuration of a known vehicle video recording device will be described in brief with reference to FIG. 1.
Referring to FIG. 1, a video recording device 110 includes a program storage unit 120, a video input unit 125, an encoding/decoding unit 130, a video storage unit 135, a display unit 140, an information providing unit 145, an information storage unit 150, and a control unit 155.
A program for driving the video recording device 110 is stored in the program storage unit 120. For example, software for driving one or more of the control unit 155, the encoding/decoding unit 130, and the like is stored in the program storage unit 120.
The video input unit 125 generates and outputs a video signal corresponding to an input outside video. The video input unit 125 includes one or more of, for example, a lens, an image sensor, and an image signal processor (ISP). The video input unit 125 may be a monitoring camera monitoring one or more of front, rear, left, and right sides.
The encoding/decoding unit 130, stores video data, which is obtained by encoding the video signal input from the video input unit 125, in the video storage unit 135 or decodes the video data stored in the video storage unit 135 and displays the decoded video data by the use of the display unit 140.
The video storage unit 135 serves to store the video data generated by the encoding/decoding unit 130.
The display unit 140 outputs one or more of the operation state of the video recording device 110 and the video data decoded by the encoding/decoding unit 130 as visual information.
The information providing unit 145 serves to provide information on GPS-received information (for example, positional coordinates) and/or a vehicle engine.
The information storage unit 150 serves to store the information provided from the information providing unit 145.
The control unit 155 controls the constituent elements of the video recording device 110 to perform the above-mentioned functions. The control unit 155 may process the information input from the information providing unit 145 for the storage in the information storage unit 150.
As described above with reference to FIG. 1, the known vehicle video recording device can record videos before and after an accident occurs and thus provide an objective material for determining the locus of responsibility of the accident.
However, the known vehicle video recording device has a usage or purpose of only storage of an accident-related video, but does not provide any material for determining the accident possibility in advance.
Generally, when the use of a vehicle (for example, a traveling distance or a driving time) increases or a driver does not tend to defensively drive the vehicle (for example, overspeed, sudden acceleration, and sudden operation of a steering wheel), the possibility of accident increases. However, these factors are not reflected in determining a preliminary loss ratio or a premium of an automobile insurance, thereby not guiding a driver to a preferable driving habit.